To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Deuteronomy 32:35
Birth Name: David (last name unknown)
Codename: Black Manta
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown, mid-forties
Birthplace: Djibouti
Allegiance: Legion of Doom
Position: Black Manta was one of the thirteen original founders of the Legion of Doom. As such, he is a member of the high council and the overall leader of the Legion's naval forces.
Appearance: David is an African man in his mid-forties, though he looks much younger. He keeps his hair cropped short. This is a man who has survived dozens of battles, and has the scars and knotted muscle to prove it.
Powers/Skills: Black Manta has no superhuman abilities, and instead relies on largely self-taught skill and discipline.
Swimming and Diving: Were he to compete in the Olympics, Black Manta would easily take gold in these events.
Martial Arts: Black Manta is trained to expert levels in arnis, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, tang soo do, and combat sambo.
Physical Conditioning: His grueling training in the above areas has made him monstrously strong, fast, and tough, though only by regular human standards.
Engineering: A self-taught engineer, Black Manta built his own powered armor and weaponry.
Seamanship: Black Manta is able to competently lead fleet-level naval operations.
Equipment/Resources:
Diving Suit: Black Manta's primary piece of gear is a custom-built suit intended for deep-sea diving and combat. It includes the following built-in features-
Carbon Fiber Construction: The suit is made from space-age materials that protect the wearer from the crushing ocean depths, extreme heat and cold, sealife, high-caliber gunfire- or even the punches of an Atlantean.
Strength Multiplier: To compensate for the immense pressure of the depths, the Black Manta suit magnifies the strength of the wearer a hundred times. With a particularly strong man like David wearing the suit, Black Manta is able to lift up to fifty tons on land.
Optic Sensors: The ocean is dark, and thus the helmet's HUD provides a variety of options: night vision, infrared, light amplification, and so on.
Survival Mechanisms: The suit is able to convert water into breathable oxygen for up to twenty-four hours of continuous operation.
Arm and Leg Blades: There are retractable and finely sharpened twenty-centimeter blades on the forearms and calves of the suit.
Telepathic Scrambler: When you regularly battle someone who can telepathically communicate with sealife, it's a good idea to deny him that advantage.
Optic Blasts: The suit's most powerful weapon by far, the eyes can fire beams of concentrated heat.
He frequently carry other weapons as befits the situation. As the admiral of the Legion of Doom's naval forces, he also has immense military and scientific resources to fall back on.
Biography: David's story is a long and tragic one, beginning when he was at the tender age of five- not even old enough to know his family surname. An innocent toddler playing on the beach in his native Djibouti, he was abruptly kidnapped by Somali pirates who mistook the young boy for the son of a local wealthy man and envisioned a good ransom. They soon realized their mistake, but rather than release the boy they instead dragged him around for months, subjecting him to unspeakable abuse.
Two years into David's captivity, he glanced out a porthole. There in the middle of the ocean, much to his surprise, he saw a man swimming- wearing a gold scale shirt. David screamed, pounded on the porthole, managed to get the strange man to look his way. The man looked back at the captive boy, then dove beneath the waves without so much as a backwards glance. The image was burned into David's young mind. The strange man heard him, but had refused to help. Rage began to supplant his despair.
The seven-year-old killed the next man who came into his cabin to abuse him, tearing open the adult's throat with his baby teeth. David demanded to take his place in the pirates' next raid; they acquiesced as a joke but were surprised to see his ferocity. David joined the sad ranks of Africa's child soldiers, coming to find killing normal. It did not calm the rage in his heart towards the strange man with the golden shirt, though.
His intelligence and general propensity for violence pushed him up through the loose and poorly organized ranks of Somali pirates, until at the age of 15 he was running his own crew. He had no formal education but was a voracious reader, finding military manuals that when combined with his experience enabled him to run an organized and disciplined crew that was soon turning a good profit and growing in numbers. He began to teach himself science, art, politics, mathematics and engineering as well.
With Superman's emergence in 2016, other superheroes soon followed. Among them was one in particular who filled David with utter hatred- Aquaman. The same man who had refused to rescue him so many years ago. Bitter and enraged, David soon began scheming to destroy the Atlantean.
Open warfare against Atlantis was unwinnable for a gang of pirates, so David opted instead for a campaign of terrorism, assassination, and extortion. For years, he and his pirates continued their surface operations, while targeting anything and anyone that meant anything to Aquaman. David murdered Aquaman's friends, colleagues, subordinates, even family members. In the meantime, David's piracy operations grew to encompass the entire Indian Ocean and he completed his Black Manta suit.
Never much of a detective, it took Aquaman years to piece together that a good portion of his life's pain had been caused by a random African pirate. Aquaman took the fight to Black Manta and the two finally faced off in combat. Long story short, Black Manta lost that round, escaping with his life. The same pattern followed time and again for several more years as the two men continued their vendetta, locked in the same old pattern.
Then the invitation came to join the Legion of Doom. Alongside such prolific criminals minds as Toyman, The Riddler, Cheetah, and Grodd, Black Manta was invited to pool his resources with others against the new Justice League. He saw the benefits of teamwork and worked diligently for the organization as it grew- though his tendency to hold grudges occasionally got in the way of effective teamwork. With the Legion's protection and resources, he was soon in charge of a navy that rivaled that of some actual sovereign countries.
When the war began in 2030, Black Manta was miffed when operations against Atlantis were instead handed to his rivals Ocean Master and Clea, but found his hands full dealing with the human navies and establishing beachheads in the third world. Never one to lead from the rear, he was at the forefront of some of the most vicious battles of the war: Qurac, Corto Maltese, Markovia, and many more.
The ceasefire and truce infuriated Black Manta. He felt they were on the verge of winning and crushing their superhero foes, only to relent at the last moment. Even an uneasy peace was unfathomable to a man who had devoted his life to hatred and fighting. Even worse, he was unable to pursue his vendetta against Aquaman (his utter hatred for Aquaman even made some of the other Legionnaires uncomfortable), passed over for anti-Atlantis ops in favor of his old rival Ocean Master.
And so Black Manta puts down the occasional minor rebellion, patrols the seas, and waits for war to resume again. Waits and plots, that is. . .
Remarks: Black Manta has no real territory of his own, but the other Legion of Doom councilors are expected to provide at least one naval base in their own territories. He rotates between these bases, usually staying aboard his flagship the Devil Ray.